


five lessons brad took from claire (and one she took from him)

by queenofthecon



Category: Bon Appétit Test Kitchen (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Fluff, RPF, just to be clear - fuck you alex delany
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 13:09:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22847131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofthecon/pseuds/queenofthecon
Summary: Brad Leone doesn't like cake. He really doesn't want to learn how to make one either - except for the fact that the cookery teacher gets under his skin like nobody he's ever met.AU-verse carpenter!Brad and baker!Claire.DISCLAIMER JUNE 2020: Please note that this fic was written months prior to the realisation that Alex Delany had previously made misogynistic, racist and homophobic comments. I apologise for including him in this fanfic and will never write him as a character again. However, my options are to add this disclaimer or delete the fic as I have no motivation to re-write anything for now, and as this work is fictional, I chose to add this disclaimer. So, just to be crystal clear.Screw you, and your fake fuckboy ‘charm’, Delany.Thank you for your time.
Relationships: Brad Leone/Claire Saffitz, Molly Baz/Alex Delany
Comments: 28
Kudos: 118





	five lessons brad took from claire (and one she took from him)

**Author's Note:**

> I have to admit this one got out of hand quite quickly and it's like, what am I even doing. I'm completely gone for fandom, I love you all to bits. Normal service will resume after this enormous 17k word fluff AU piece, massively inspired by badtemperedchocolate's fic _Mr November_. Go read it now. 
> 
> Please remember the rules of RPF club - do not share around, this is just for fun. Remember that this is RPF; none of this is real and nor do we want it to be. This is a work of pure fiction and no harm is ever intended. 
> 
> A massive thank you to El for her dedication to reading this fic a hundred times and telling me where I sucked (it sucked for a little bit, ngl) - couldn't have done it without you, as always.

DISCLAIMER JUNE 2020: Please note that this fic was written months prior to the realisation that Alex Delany had previously made misogynistic, racist and homophobic comments. I apologise for including him in this fanfic and will never write him as a character again. However, my options are to add this disclaimer or delete the fic as I have no motivation to re-write anything for now, and as this work is fictional, I chose to add this disclaimer. So, just to be crystal clear:

Screw you, and your fake fuckboy ‘charm’, Delany. 

Thank you for your time.

***

** lesson one **

Brad Leone just does not like cake, okay?

It's a fact of nature, even though people act like it's some kinda curse he's been walking around with for 34 fricking years - it goes with his ADD and the endless search for approval from his mother (who lives and dies for a damn good devil's food cake). He's never liked any of it: not birthday cakes, not the grocery store garbage or the fancy shmancy shit he hears they got at the new bakery on Henderson. It's nothing much to even be bothered about. It’s not as if all the guys at the wood shop are clamouring over each other to hunt down a cake in all of Anchorage that Brad will tolerate. He'll _live_.

All the above applies no matter the situation, so he really doesn't get why Alex Delany's dragging him to a fricking baking class at 7pm on a Tuesday when he could be at the bar, watching his friends try it on with the sassy, blonde bartender (Molly, he thinks her name is). Because Brad Leone doesn’t like cake and he really doesn’t wanna learn how to bake one.

First of all, his hands ain't exactly built for this delicate stuff they do with cakes these days, like making things out of chocolate that probably don’t need to be made out of chocolate. He doesn't really count himself as either a good cook or a bad cook, but he'd rather make a great sandwich in five minutes using good quality deli ham than spend a few hours making things his Mom cooks better with her eyes closed. But Delany’s a bud – he’s saved Brad’s ass on a couple of occasions – and maybe he just wants to get this one night over and done with so he can fail at baking the same way he did every other class when he was in school.

“God, you gotta be fricking kidding me. _Vanille_?” Brad says as he realises where they’re heading, glaring at Delany. He just _had_ to pick the dead of January when the snow’s a foot thick on the ground to decide he wants to ‘_learn a new skill, Leone, c’mon_’ and it’s at that new bakery with the windows full of glazed things and stuff Brad has no idea how to even eat. _Delany. _“Why we doing this?”

“Because if I have to spend another night with you in a bar shooting your mouth off about the failed hockey try-outs of 2001 and how you could’ve been a great defense, I’m gonna scream,” Delany says brightly next to him, a grin plastered on his face. “You don’t wanna branch out, meet some new people?”

“I know a lot of people, alright?” Brad replies, following Delany’s lead as he grabs the door to the brightly lit bakery and yanks it open. The smell of yeast and butter hits him square in the face. “I got people coming out the wazoo, and so do you, as a matter of fact. So why you-”

It’s then that he sees exactly why. A woman with a shock of straw-blonde hair, pink cheeks and a loud laugh that he recognises from across the room. Molly the bartender. By the sheepish look on Alex’s face, he’s not surprised she’s here. Brad has the distinct feeling he’s been played.

“Brad, look-”

“Oh, yeah, so you’re definitely fucking dead, Delany.” Brad laughs suddenly, shaking the compacted snow from his spiked boots and hanging up his coat by the door where a pile’s already grown. “You dragged me into this so you can charm Molly? The girl’s gonna think you’re a stalker.”

“Oh, come on, man,” Alex mutters, his voice lower. Brad just rolls his eyes. “You saying you never did anything dumb to impress someone? What about that time you told that girl Jamie you did three summers in Texas as a cattle rancher?”

“I did!” he protests as Delany shoves at his shoulder. “Alright, so what if it was in middle school, she didn’t have to know that.”

“And I backed you up! Just do this for me, Brad.” Alex looks at him with his grin and Brad knows he’s already about three feet deep inside this dumb idea and that he might as well swim for the other side. “You never know what’s gonna happen at these things! What if Molly’s like… the One and you’re stopping me from dating the One just because you don’t like cake?! And how many times have I gone along with whatever you wanna do at the shop, and all those projects you keep proposing? You owe me this at least.”

“Alright, alright, alright, Jesus Christ, Delany. Fine, one fucking baking class, s’all you’re getting outta me, bud. Favour factory closed for the_ year_.”

“Relax, it’s like _one_ class, you’re not gonna burst into flames if they make you eat dessert, okay?” Delany laughs and Brad lets him lead the way to the back of the bakery where that smell of yeast and butter seems to permeate everything, getting stronger. The place is cute for what it is – bare brick, varnished oak counters and warm industrial lights. Kinda hipster, but it works, Brad thinks.

It’s a good thing Alex really is one of the good guys because there’s no other person he’d willingly bake a cake for. It doesn’t stop him from feeling weird and awkward in about thirty seconds flat. In truth, Brad knows he doesn’t really fit in with a place like _Vanille_. Just walking through to the kitchen, he can tell the café is always full of fancy people in nice clothes with college degrees who spend too much money on organic butter. Delany’s a great guy, but he can blend in and charm a crowd quickly; he slides in with story after story and adjusts himself with ease. Brad’s not a total incompetent asshole (he never met an old lady who didn’t wanna set him up with their single granddaughter) but he’s way out of his comfort zone on this one.

They find themselves in a bright, open kitchen surrounded by stainless steel. Everyone else is mingling, talking about how good the food is, and isn’t the pastry chef a fricking _genius_ and what do you say when you have no intention of buying a $12 croissant sandwich? There’s a middle-aged guy who uses the word _heavenly_, and Brad dies a little inside. The wood burning oven’s pretty fucking cool, though.

Okay, so he doesn’t know the first damn thing about how to bake a fricking cake. Still, can’t be that hard, right? Brad finds a station next to Delany and has to kick his friend in the shins to get him to stop making moon eyes at Molly on the other side of the long counter. At least he’ll get to make fun of Delany for a good few months after tonight – Brad’s a glass half-full kinda guy.

“If you abandon me, Delany, I swear to Christ…” Brad mutters under his breath as the last of the class finds whatever spare space they can. There’s at least eight other people here, so it’s not like he can goof off in the back of class like he did at school.

What he’s not expecting is the fucking hot teacher.

“I hope everyone’s actually here,” a woman says from the front of the room. His head snaps around at the sound, smacking Delany in the arm as he does. Her eyes are what hit him first – they’re wide and dark brown and framed by long lashes and okay, yeah, she’s gorgeous and kinda tiny compared to him, and not what he expected at all. She’s not even wearing a chef’s jacket, just a normal apron that’s smeared and dirtied, the strings wrapped around her waist. “Hey everyone, I’m Claire and this is Bakery for Beginners. Real original name, I know.” She grins almost shyly at the soft chuckling and tucks a thick strand of black and grey hair behind her ear. “So, we’ve got five weeks of lessons planned out in the booklets in front of you, if everyone wants to have a look.”

As if on cue, everyone opens up the folders on their stations and Brad’s eyes widen as he flicks through his own one. It’s been fucking categorised, with index and contents pages, and _source citations_ and footnotes, and glossy pictures obviously taken on a cell phone.

“Did she make this herself?” he whispers to Delany as he thumbs across the pages. They’re _laminated_ and have page markers with labels on them.

Alex leans across and grins again, shaking his head as he shows Brad the end photograph of some kinda pastry thing that looks as if it’d make the paper taste better just for being printed on it. “You’re so screwed, Leone.”

The woman – Claire – clears her throat and flashes both of them a hard glare and it really is like being back at school.

“Okay, let’s go over some basics first…” Claire says, her eyes lingering on Brad.

Yeah, Delany’s right – he’s totally screwed.

***

Turns out, much to Brad’s surprise, that baking’s more like science than it is cooking, which is fucking weird to him since that makes no sense at all, though it does explain how his station is covered in flour and eggshells. It takes longer than it should have according to the NASA-grade instructions in front of him, but he’s got a batter which kinda looks like everyone else’s at the end of it. So what if half of his sugar bag is crunching beneath his feet on the tiled floor and there’s butter smeared across his apron? It’s just like hers, after all.

Brad’s just about to pour his cake batter into the pan when he feels Claire’s gaze from across the room, her face contorted in horror like he’s murdering her mother in front of her own eyes.

“Okay, okay, stop,” Claire says hurriedly as his bowl tips a little further forward, and suddenly she’s dashing around the stainless steel benches to halt him. “Look – what’s your name?”

“Brad, Brad Leone,” he replies, distracted as she snatches the mixing bowl from his hands before he can pour even a drop of batter into the pan. “Hey, what the hell? I followed your fricking recipe, okay, to the letter. It’s _fine_. Ain’t no problem here, Teach.”

But Claire-the-pastry-chef just rolls her eyes at him and pulls his batter out of his reach as he tries to grab it back from her. “Yeah, the batter’s great, but you didn’t line your cake pan! It doesn’t matter if you make the best cake in the world, it’s all for nothing if it sticks.”

The realisation dawns on him quickly. So that’s what the paper stuff was for. “Oh, so, yeah… I kinda fucked that up,” he mumbles, reaching for the cake pan at the same time as her. “No, no, no, I got it, I got it!”

“Let me just show you-”

He _swears_ he’s not normally this God-awful at basic stuff any six year old can do – it’s the eyes on him, and Claire’s face grimacing just as he’s about to do something simple that she’s obviously already made her mind up that he’s gonna do wrong. She’s right, but she doesn’t need to _know_ that.

“Jesus Christ, lady, I can cut some paper up, alright?” He tries not to laugh at the doubtful look on her face but it’s hard when there’s a genuine concern behind it. “Make you a deal Miss Pastry Chef – when I screw it up, you can come save my ass _and_ give me a ten-minute lecture, okay?”

To his surprise, she snorts in laughter with one look at the grin on his face and raises her palms in defeat. “Show me what you can do, then, if you’re so sure of your _technique_…”

It’s like he _feels_ Delany trying hard not to make some sarcastic comment next to him as Brad kinda guestimates the size to cut the baking paper to fit the cake pan. He doesn’t know why he’s even trying so hard when there’s absolutely _zero_ chance of him coming back next week for the second lesson. Maybe it’s the fact that Claire-the-pastry-chef is expecting him to fail hard, maybe he just wants to prove her wrong, to show he’s got a trick or two up his own sleeve.

Five minutes of her intense scrutiny later, he’s got a cake pan lined on the bottom and the sides with paper, and okay, it’s not perfect, but it’s what she asked, right?

“Ta da!” he says in triumph, raising his arms in the air, though Claire looks as if he’s set the thing on fire instead. “It’s not bad, though, c’mon, it’s not bad!”

Claire’s face contorts again, and she fiddles around with the paper, re-setting it against the edges in some way that magically makes it better. “Maybe you wanna make relief cuts in this long side piece? That way the batter in the corner has less chance of sticking to the cake pan…” she says, demonstrating on a spare piece of baking paper. “But, yeah, not bad, I guess. Like a solid B minus?”

“Hey, a B minus is an A in my book, Claire,” he mumbles, pulling out the parchment and making the relief slits in the paper like she showed him. “You’re pretty good at this stuff, right?”

“I try,” she says softly, watching his hands carefully as he snips. “Took about ten years of training, but I’ll take ‘pretty good’ any day.”

The paper slides against the cake pan perfectly, the edges curling now there’s relief slits and – oh fuck – there’s a bright beaming smile blooming slowly on Claire’s pretty face that catches his eye for a second too long.

“What d’you think, Teach, am I ready to put this bad boy in the oven now?” Brad asks, full of dumb, swelling pride at successfully lining a fucking cake pan. “Gotta tell ya, I think I’m gonna be the star pupil. No need for any further lessons, right?”

Claire fixes him with a pointed smile as she turns and looks at the gas stove behind him and suddenly snorts in laughter. “Well, Star Pupil Brad, if I can teach you one thing, it’s that in order to bake anything…” she gestures to the stove. “The oven needs to actually be turned on first.”

Beside him, Delany bursts out laughing as Claire walks away shaking her head.

So maybe Brad needs more than one lesson.

** lesson two **

As cakes go, it seems pretty okay.

It’s not the neatest, fanciest chocolate-vanilla cake in the world, and the frosting was kind of a rush job at the end of the lesson, but – fuck it – Brad’s pretty damn proud of the way his friends jaws drop when he brings it into work the next morning. There’s a good dollop of smug satisfaction when Delany slides his own cake next to it and realises Brad’s is bigger by like a full inch (it’s not a contest). He’s not gloating, not at all – it’s just the cherry on top of the literal cake.

“I dunno, man, I might’ve got ya beat on this one,” Brad says, smacking Alex on the shoulder with a broad palm as they get back onto the shop floor. It’s noisy but quiet at the same time, just a few of them working on commissions and repair jobs by themselves: he calls it Heaven. “It’s fine, it’s cool, I’m just naturally better’n you in every single way, right? I mean, there’s absolutely no fucking way you’d ever end up overtaking me at this point. Might as well give up now and just pay me fifty bucks.”

“Oh God, not this again…” Delany mutters, grabbing their safety gear from their lockers. “You get like this every time, Brad. I am not making a bet with you about baking class when it’s been one lesson!”

“Who’s betting what for what now?” Andy says next to them, his white t-shirt covered with wood shavings and apparently purposeful holes (Brad doesn’t get why Andy pays more for physically less of a shirt than a shirt should be – kids these days). “Since when do you _bake_, Leone?”

Brad rolls his eyes and grabs a set of goggles from Delany’s hands. “Why ‘m I getting shit for this, it was your idea in the first place.” He jabs the goggles into Alex’s gut. “Couldn’t just be a man and ask out a cute girl, no, you’re fucking stalking her instead. You barely even said two words to her the whole time!”

At least his friend has the audacity to look sheepish about the whole situation. “I know, I know, but Molly turns every single guy down, Brad, I just want a better footing. You’re one to talk anyway, don’t think I didn’t notice the way you were looking at Claire last night.”

“Claire?” Brad replies with an exaggerated frown, grabbing some raw wood slabs with gloved hands. “No idea what you’re talking about, bud.”

“Fuck off,” Alex laughs, helping Brad carry the wood over to their work benches. “She is _exactly_ the kinda girl you go for, like it’s uncanny how much she’s your type.”

It’s not that he hadn’t noticed how pretty Claire-the-pastry-chef was but, seriously, he’s not about to tell Delany he’s right about something. It’s not as if a girl like her would ever go out with some blue-collar guy like Brad, anyway.

“Nah, see, I don’t think I got a type of girl I go for,” he says as he and Delany measure out the wood block, trying to find the perfect lines they need for a new tabletop to restore an old piece of furniture. Delany’s still learning the trade and as far as Brad’s concerned, there’s no better way to learn than getting your hands dirty. “No such thing as types these days.”

On the bench across from them, Andy snorts in laughter as he sketches out a design plan on graph paper, barely paying attention to either of them. “Please, Brad, I’ve met your girlfriends, you totally have a type. Dark hair, short but stacked, and totally bosses you around. That’s your type – if you were into guys, we’d have totally hooked up by now,” he looks up finally, tilting his head and grinning. “You know I’m right.”

“In your _dreams_, Baraghani!” Brad grins wide, shaking his head. “You’d be fucking lucky to get me, pal, I’m a total ten.”

“Honey, face facts, you’re a _seven_. Eight on a good day, maybe,” Andy says flippantly, going back to his sketches. “Don’t be an Alex Delany – if you really like this girl, just ask her out. Not like you’ve had a date in months.”

“Andy, you’re meant to be on my side here.” Delany gestures between them before shoving at Brad’s side again. Maybe Brad’s gonna have to think of some way to get him back for all this. “All I’m saying is, you were totally checking Claire out last night. No harm in going back to class, getting a little one-on-one time with a cute girl, _and_ help your best friend find true love, okay?”

If there’s one thing Brad doesn’t do is abandon his friends. That’s why he’s doing this – not because Claire’s got an ass that looks like it’d fit his palms perfectly. “Alright, I’m in. It’ll be fun to watch you say three words to Molly this week instead of two – maybe by the last lesson, you’ll have worked up to a full fucking sentence.”

“I’ll take it.” Delany beams as if he’s won the argument. “But yeah, Claire Saffitz is a _thousand_ percent your type. You were actually trying to impress her last night, admit it.”

“Wait, your baking classes are with Claire Saffitz from _Vanille_?” Andy asks, looking back up again. “A French-trained pastry chef is trying to teach you two bozos how to bake? How long do your lessons run for, like ten years?”

They both look at Andy with indignation. “Hey, we did pretty okay-ish!” Brad exclaims. “I mean, mine’s better, but that’s cos Delany just sucks more than me at basically everything he’s ever done in his adult life.”

“Shut up-”

“You don’t even like cake, Brad!”

Brad rolls his eyes and pulls a pencil from behind his ear, measuring and marking out cut points on the raw wood. “You don’t gotta like cake to know how to bake one, alright? It’s _easy_. Even this bozo could do it.”

Alex Delany reminds him of this statement when he pulls a fragment of eggshell from a slice of Brad’s cake. In his defence, as Brad explains, the recipe didn’t say _not_ to get any eggshells in the batter.

(His is still better than Delany’s)

***

Unlike cake, Brad likes most cookies, especially the soft-in-the-middle, crunchy-round-the-edges spicy ginger cookies Claire has them make the next week. He’s even got a secret soft spot for the chocolate chip shortbreads too, (they have to be dark chocolate, never milk, and don’t even talk to him if they’re white). Better still, Molly hadn’t even turned up – sick or something – and Brad got to watch the realisation dawn on poor Alex’s face that he wasn’t gonna get to flirt with her over cookie dough.

Not a _bad_ Tuesday night, Brad supposes. The snow outside is coming down thick and fast, though, and he just wants to rip into his Tupperware box of homemade cookies with a bottle of beer and get through the rest of January in peace. The world, however, has different ideas for the rest of his evening.

It’s not until just after 8.30pm, when he’s about to drive home, that he sees what’s not there – his grandpa’s watch isn’t wrapped around his wrist like it normally is; it’s probably still on his station at the bakery where he’d taken it off to roll out shortbread dough. For a moment Brad just sits in his truck, snow falling gently outside like the night sky’s the one dusting him with powdered sugar. It’s fucking freezing, and there’s a part of him that would rather do anything than walk through another snowfall.

He could come back tomorrow, just ask one of the servers to grab it for him. Claire-the-cute-pastry-chef would notice it, he’s sure; she’d set the watch aside and make sure nobody took it. But for some reason, none of that crosses his mind for even a second. Brad grabs the keys out of the ignition and locks his truck before walking back through compacted snowfall.

It’s not that he wants to see her again. It’s not.

“Hey Claire?!” Brad calls as he pushes open the bakery door. “You here?!”

The actual storefront is dark and empty, and he thinks maybe he should come back tomorrow when he hears a loud, ringing crash from the kitchen. It’s there he finds Claire standing frozen to the spot with her hands on her hips curling into fists, shards of broken glass scattered all over the tiled floor.

“Ugh, fucking God-” she curses as she stares listlessly at the mess, wiping her brow with the back of her arm. There’s a weariness to her he’s not seen before, pinched in the way she slumps her shoulders and he _has_ to help.

“You okay there, Claire?”

Her shoulders snap back, and her head turns before she realises it’s just him. “Jesus, sorry, you scared the crap out of me,” Claire says, bending to pick up the largest pieces of broken glass. “I just dropped some mixing bowls, shouldn’t do this stuff when I’m tired, huh?”

Brad steps into the kitchen carefully, helping pick up the larger shards. “Let me get that for ya, Claire, you’ll cut up your hands if you’re not careful…” He drags over a trash can and deposits the glass inside, feeling bad that she’s obviously having a shitty day. “You good?”

“Yeah, yeah,” she says dismissively. “I drop stuff all the time. You forgot your watch, right? I thought it was yours…” Claire digs into the pocket of her apron and produces his grandpa’s watch with a soft smile, holding it out for him. “I didn’t want it getting lost or anything.”

His thick, blunt fingers brush her hand as he takes the watch, relieved that it wasn’t down a garbage disposal. “Shit, yeah, thanks,” Brad mumbles, slipping it back onto his wrist. “Woulda got in a load of trouble with my Ma if I’d lost this. She used to smack my hand with a wooden spoon for losing my stuff.”

Claire tucks her thick hair behind her ear, glancing up at him with a soft, tired gaze. “Wouldn’t want you getting in trouble, huh? She might ground you, and there goes my thirty bucks a lesson.”

“You should charge more, to be honest,” he says, a little caught in her beautiful eyes through his growing smile. “Those ginger cookies were fucking incredible.”

A soft pink blush of warmth goes over her pale cheeks at the compliment. “Hey, you made them, it’s just my recipe…” Claire beams up at him for a second before seeming to catch herself. “I better get back to cleaning, though. _Sucks_.”

It’s then that he realises just how much _mess_ there is everywhere all over her kitchen. The stations are all coated in flour, sticky patches of God-knows-what on the floor and the oven handles, and piles of dishes in the huge sink.

“Jesus Christ, Claire, who you teaching, wild animals?” Brad scrubs at the back of his neck with his hand, kind of embarrassed that he and everyone else in the class had just abandoned everything when there was still so much shit to clear up. She shouldn’t have to do this by herself. “You on your own here? I can help if you need.”

If Claire thinks – even for a moment – about rejecting his offer, he doesn’t see it. It’s like she melts on the spot in front of him instead, intensely grateful. “I could really use it today, thanks,” she says, her voice a little higher. “You know when you get those times where you step out of bed and it’s like ‘why did I even bother, today is gonna suck’?” She shakes her head softly, grabbing a broom from behind her. “The last _month_ has been like that.”

Brad takes the broom from her hand wordlessly, sweeping up the flour and tiny glass fragments while she gathers the rest of the dishes from the stations. “A whole fricking month? Jeeze, I thought you were doing great. Everybody’s talking about it – the guys at work all fucking rave about this place.”

“Yeah, it’s just the other stuff… I’ve got warped countertops, we had a gas leak the day before we opened, the drains keep getting blocked...” she starts filling the giant sink thing with water, leaning her hip on the countertop to watch him sweep. “It’s like a laundry list of things to do, and it’s like ‘_ugh, what now_’?” Claire groans dramatically and he tries not to laugh.

“Hey, if it helps, I know some stuff about plumbing and repair work, all that shit,” Brad says quickly, like his mouth’s way ahead of his brain – which it is, most of the time. “Maybe you and me can get a deal goin’, Saffitz. What ya call it, like a quid pro quo.”

Claire raises an eyebrow at him dangerously. His stomach lurches at the look that flashes across her face. “Oh yeah, what deal do you have in mind, Brad?”

For his sins, Brad feels the blush creep up his own cheeks and he looks away, down at the collection of glass and ingredients he’s already swept up. “Well, see, my buddy Delany dragged me here in the first place, so I need to get one over on him, y’know? Maybe you give me a couple extra tips or some shit, let me get ahead of the game.”

She looks at him suspiciously just for a moment. “Your friend dragged you here, huh? I’m guessing there’s a bet going on?”

“Yeah, well, he’s one of_ those_, Claire, thinks he’s good at everything after doing it once,” Brad shrugs aimlessly. “Gotta knock him down a notch or two, the way best friends do. I need your help to do it, Claire, I need ya real bad.”

When Brad looks back up, Claire’s practically beaming at him, an adorable giggle at the back of her voice. “So, in summary, all I need to do to get my cleaning time cut in half is to give you some baking tips? Sign me up, Brad, I am all in favour of free labour.”

“Why do I feel like I’m the one who got conned here,” he replies, laughing too. “You got some wily ways about you, Saffitz. Better keep my eyes on you.”

“One rule, though, if I’m gonna help you,” Claire says, going back to her dishes. “I can’t reveal too much about my process. And don’t question my methods.”

“That’s two rules, technically speaking,” Brad barks in laughter as a dish cloth is thrown at his head. “Hey, if you can’t handle a little constructive criticism…”

Claire just rolls her eyes at him as he throws the dishcloth back to her, her lips curving into a tiny smile. “Since when is anyone’s criticism ever actually constructive, Brad?”

***

It’s almost 10pm by the time everything’s cleaned to Claire’s (really fucking exacting) standards. Brad’s back is kinda broken and his hands are cramped and sore, and fuck knows how she does this every week and still gets up in the morning to start her normal day over again. The woman’s relentless.

“You get the oven handles?” Claire asks, on her knees as she finishes scrubbing the floor. “Brad, it’s really important-”

“Yeah, I got the handles, Claire, relax.” He groans extra loud just because he can, leaning his torso over the countertop because his back is fucking broken now she’d worked him ragged. “How the fuck did someone get like… syrup and shit on the fricking oven door?! It don’t make sense!”

“I _know_! Welcome to my world,” she replies, sitting back on her own legs. “You can just take off if you need, I really owe you one just for offering to help.”

But Brad doesn’t wanna move, and just waves his hand at her as she gives up on scrubbing the spot that won’t come out. “Yeah, yeah. Pro tip for you, Claire – never do two recipes in one lesson. Creates fucking chaos.”

He watches as Claire stretches out her muscles, and that exhaustion from before seems to seep back into her bones slowly. “Gotta agree with you there. I ache so much, Brad, I really do.”

When she doesn’t move to get up, he smacks his hand against the counter loudly, knowing he’s gotta do something. Brad pushes himself off the worktop with a tired smile, stepping over to Claire where she’s still sitting on the floor; she looks like she could use a friend and a helping hand.

“Jesus, we gotta look after you better…” he mumbles as she looks up at him pitifully. Brad takes her hands and grips them firmly in his. “C’mon, Saffitz, up you get. Y’gonna cramp up if you don’t and that ain’t gonna be pretty.”

Those slim fingers curl around his rough, wide palms and squeeze softly as she stands back up from the floor with his help. His thumb barely gets to brush over her knuckles when she pulls back, flushed and tired and cute beyond all fucking cuteness. He ignores how incredibly soft her skin still is, despite the cleaning and the hard work she obviously puts into her business.

“Thanks,” she mutters, peeling her dirty apron off. “For everything, really, it’s… I appreciate it.”

He thinks there’s the most fleeting of moments when their eyes meet, and the world makes more sense than it has in years. Brad knows how much of a fucking dumbass he most of the time is, especially when it comes to beautiful women, but it’s different with her – he just has no idea why.

“You look like a stiff breeze is gonna knock you over, Claire.” Brad mutters, shoving his hands back into his pockets. “Ya gonna be alright getting home like this?”

Claire giggles and looks at him with the crinkles between her nose. “You know I just need to walk upstairs, right? I live in the apartment up there.”

His ears go pink and he rolls his eyes. “Uh, duh, course ya do, Saffitz, I was just testing your brain capacity is all.” They chuckle together and she tucks her hair back behind her ear. “I better get home before I say something even dumber. Highly likely with my mouth, huh?”

He expects her to laugh again, even hopes for it, but Claire just frowns up at him like she doesn’t believe him. “Why do you _do_ that? I don’t think you’re dumb, Brad. You’ve got great instincts about stuff – like, I watched you put more flaky salt on top of your shortbread when they came out of the oven. I do the same thing, I just forgot to put it in the recipe.”

Brad just kind of stands there, his skin getting warmer by the minute. “Any idiot knows-”

“No, no they don’t. You knew.” Claire shakes her head at him, her arms crossed over her chest and it really does somehow flash him back to high school, when the shop teacher took him aside and told him to stop goofing around and ‘_apply himself_’. “Look, you want a baking tip? Here it is: trust your own instincts, because I think they’re pretty damn good already. And don’t question me, remember?”

The rest of her becomes a blur in Brad’s mind, but the softness and kindness of her encouragement sticks with him for a long time. He eats his own shortbread in his own kitchen when it’s nearly midnight, tasting the salt and the bitter chocolate cutting down the sweetness and he smiles, because there’s _something _there. He knows there is.

Overall, baking class definitely doesn’t suck as much as he thought it would. Maybe he’ll just do one more. For Delany.

** lesson three **

Brad has already learned two very specific things in the interim between watching Claire make perfect cream puffs and actually making them himself:

One: piping that sticky batter stuff so all his puffs are the same size is the hardest fucking thing in the world and no number of guidelines can make him stay neat and consistent and blah blah blah. He’s not a colour-inside-the-lines type, okay?

Two: all five ovens at full blast at the same time, in a kitchen full of reflective metal, makes the place hotter than fucking Hades. The only upside is Claire peeling off her sweater when the heat gets too much, because it reveals so goddamn much of her pale, creamy shoulders that he could count her fucking freckles if he wanted to. He does want to, though, that’s the thing.

It’d be a great time if not for the fact that he’s bored out of his mind waiting for the choux things to cook since apparently you can’t do anything else until they’re cooked and cold. Brad leans right over his station on his forearms, his foot bouncing on the floor. He’s resolutely not watching Claire fan herself in her tank top, her skin a pale pink and glowing from the heat in the room and fuck – he needs a distraction or else he’s really gonna be completely in trouble.

Next to him, Molly’s sitting on her countertop with her feet swinging, scrolling through her phone while Delany looks like he’s trying his hardest not to lose his own cool in front of her. He’s gotta admit that Molly’s pretty awesome, actually, as far as Delany’s potential girlfriends do – she’s sassy and snarky, and perfect as a counterfoil for Alex’s effortless charm. He kids around a lot, but Brad thinks they got chemistry out the wazoo already – not much more needed when you got that.

Both of them are scrolling rapidly through their phones next to him, and Brad rolls his eyes when Molly talks avidly about some new restaurant downtown that she loves that Delany pretends not to know anything about, because he’s just as dumb around a pretty girl as Brad is.

“Altro? Never heard of it,” Delany says and Brad snorts in laughter, wincing quickly as Alex kicks his heel back into Brad’s leg. Delany had been to Altro a month ago when they opened and wouldn’t shut up about the fucking seafood for at least a week after. “Good food?”

“Hell yeah! The apps and the oysters? Beautiful beasties.” Molly says, beaming at her phone as she scrolls through her photos to show him. “Went with my Mom a couple weeks ago, you should check it out.”

Alex, apparently, decides to say nothing much in return.

Brad considers it a kindness to his best friend that he waits until Molly’s in the bathroom to burst into all-out laughter, smacking his palms on the table. “Oh Jesus Christ, Delany, this is actually painful to watch. What the fuck is wrong with you? She was giving you giant hints to ask her out and you just blanked her!”

Delany pinches the bridge of his nose and for once Brad feels bad for the guy. “Look, I don’t know, man, it’s like my brain doesn’t engage with my mouth and I say the dumbest shit ever. What is wrong with me? Am I _you_ now? Oh, my fucking God…”

“Yeah, I’ve been there, bud,” he replies, ignoring Alex trying to dig at him. “You just gotta stick it out, and maybe just try and ask her out when she comes back. It’s easy!”

But his friend just fixes him with a pointed stare. “If it’s so easy, how come you’ve not asked Claire out yet?” Brad rolls his eyes and his jaw ticks, purposefully fixing Alex with a silent warning to keep his voice down. “You have not taken your eyes off her since she took her sweater off, Brad.”

His foot bounces on the ground as he watches Claire help someone at the end of the room before he drags his gaze back to Delany. “Okay so what if I do like her? If I ask her out and she turns me down, it’ll make the next few lessons awkward as Hell. No rush, right? She might not even like me like that.”

Delany snorts, shaking his head. “Yeah right, man, you keep telling yourself that.”

Any further conversation on the topic of dating Claire Saffitz is halted when Molly walks back in the kitchen, her eyes immediately locking with Delany’s. Brad just groans and hits his forehead on the countertop as he sees the two of them fall back into conversation about Altro and oysters in Alaskan winters and how unsalted pasta water is an abomination (the last one Brad agrees with. His Ma raised him to salt the fricking pasta water). All Brad can do to keep his eyes off Claire is to stare intently at his kitchen timer instead.

There’s still ten _long_ minutes left before his cream puff things have to come out, but it can’t hurt to peek inside the oven at least a little bit. For the first five seconds the oven opens, everything seems fine – the puffs are puffed, kinda, and pale golden and shiny but obviously not done. Everything seems fine in those first five seconds.

The sixth second is when Brad Leone learns a third, very specific lesson about making cream puff shells worthy of a place like _Vanille_: you do not, under any circumstance, open the fucking oven door before they’re cooked.

All of his shittily piped cream puff shells fall and collapse in front of his eyes, like they know he’s having a bad day and just want to pile on top of him. Steam billows out around Brad as he just stares at the failure in his oven.

“Fucking motherfuckers…” he groans, pulling the tray of ruined cream puffs from the oven with his dry cloth and shoving the tray on the gas burners on top of the oven. “Shit, shit, shit!”

Worst of all, he can feel everyone’s eyes on him as Claire comes over to witness his dumbass-ness first-hand.

“You opened the oven, didn’t you?” she mutters quietly, a hand on her hip as she watches him poke at his half-cooked puffs. “Choux pastry needs the steam in the oven to rise. If that’s gone before the protein sets, they-”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, Claire, I got it, they collapse.” He swallows down all the curse words he wants to shout out for fucking up the easiest part of the recipe – the do-nothing-at-all part – and just looks at her with a gaze he hopes means ‘help me’. “If I put ‘em back in-”

“Not gonna work, sorry. Once they fall, that’s it.” Claire grimaces and shrugs her shoulders at him. “It’s alright, it’s part of learning is making mistakes. You know how many times I still burn caramel? You’ll get there, Brad.”

Then her hand taps lightly at his shoulder and – God – he hates screwing up in front of her for some reason; normally, he’d blow this off his shoulder and just keep going. “Don’t count on it, Claire. I basically fuck everything up sooner or later.”

She looks for a second like she’s about to say something else but Delany’s next to him, pulling perfect fucking cream puff shells out of the oven and her eyes light up. Delany’s are golden and even in size, and even Brad has to admit that he’s impressed too.

“Oh wow, Alex, those look _great_,” Claire says, her eyes lighting up. “Good size, good shape, the best batch yet, well done.”

Something twists around in Brad’s gut like a knife and he glares daggers at both Delany and his fucking perfect puffs. It’s in that moment that Brad decides he’s not giving up on this fricking recipe – no matter what, Claire Saffitz is gonna get his homemade, perfect cream puffs (and they’ll be better than _Alex’s_).

***

There’s just one part of Brad’s plan to _Make Cream Puffs for Claire_ he hasn’t thought about. Apparently, making this weird batter-dough-pastry stuff is hard when your kitchen’s not Claire’s: five batches in and he’s gone through more eggs in the last hour than he has in the whole rest of the month and his worktops resemble a small explosion in a flour factory.

He really hates to do it, but he’s one more pot of scrambled eggs away from a full-on fuck-this-shit breakdown. Alex Delany arrives at Brad’s door on a Sunday night carrying two full cases of craft beer and the extra eggs Brad had begged him to bring.

Surprisingly, he’s also brought Andy for some fucking reason.

“Before you say anything, I didn’t bring him, he brought himself,” Alex says, setting the beer down on Brad’s coffee table. “Tell him why, Andy.”

“_Please_, like I’m missing the opportunity to watch Brad Leone trying to bake cream puffs, at home, on a Sunday night just to impress a _girl_,” Andy grins too widely and pulls his phone from his jacket. Before he can even say a word, Andy takes a picture of Brad in his dirty apron with literal egg on his face. “That right there, that made it totally worth skipping dinner with my sister and her annoying boyfriend.”

Brad just glares at them both before shrugging his shoulders. “Yeah, why not make a spectacle of my misery. Wanna join the fun, Delany? Get a couple shots in before the night’s over, bud?”

“Don’t need to, Andy’s got it covered.” Alex tugs off his vintage Levi jacket (Brad knows it’s vintage; Alex has told him this fact a hundred times), draping it over the back of Brad’s couch. “I figured it was an emergency since you’ve never texted me for help with anything ever in our entire friendship.”

“Rub it in, why don’t ya,” Brad mumbles, scrubbing the back of his head with a sticky hand that’s somehow still covered in egg. “Just help me, here, okay. This is all your fault in the first place.”

He leads his friends into the kitchen and watches their faces as they see the utter carnage that he’s brought upon himself and his poor oven. Andy’s actually videoing his failures now, so Brad figures it can’t get _much_ worse than that.

“Holy shit,” Andy says, trying not to laugh as he looks up. “How did you get egg on the ceiling fan?”

“I don’t know! How did any of this even happen, Andy, you tell me!” He has to chuckle despite himself, leaning back against his kitchen counter. “Am I totally and completely screwed here?”

Alex runs his palm over his beard before he wanders over to the pile of failed cream puffs on the countertops, eyes wide at the sheer number of them. “Depends which part you’re taking about. If it’s cream puffs, then you’ll be fine, it’s not as hard as you think it is. But if we’re talking about you crushing on Claire Saffitz, you are totally and completely screwed.”

“Oh yeah, you really are, man,” Andy agrees, pocketing his phone and taking off his own jacket. “But hey, that’s what you got us for. Alex has your back with… this…” he gestures vaguely in the direction of the chaos. “And I can help you devise a confident strategy to get into Claire’s pants.”

“I need a strategy for that?” he replies, pressing his fingertips into his eyes. Delany’s already dumping fifty bucks of ruined cream puffs into a trash can, though, and there’s no looking back after that. “Christ, I never wanna see another cream puff again.”

“It’s okay, bud,” Delany says, clapping him on the shoulder. “Those things weren’t cream puffs anyway.”

Four beers later – Brad’s not wasted, but he’s laughing again at least – there’s one good batch of choux pastry (that’s what it’s actually called, so Delany says), puffed and golden and fucking _perfect_ cooling on his stovetop. Turns out, Delany bakes them every Christmas with his family and Brad’s calling it a wash between them since Alex only _talked_ him through the newest batch. Leones don’t admit defeat, after all.

“… just fill em with like a whipped cream and dip in chocolate. You can do that, bud.” Alex dries the dishes as Brad hands them to him while Andy takes pictures of the good cream puff shells for posterity’s sake. “Now can we please talk about what’s got you so hung up on her?”

His head tilts down as Brad tries to figure out exactly what’s wrong. “You ever met someone so fucking good at what they do that it’s like… ‘wow, you’re awesome, what the fuck am I doing with my life?’ I dunno, dude…”

Andy chuckles from where he’s sat at the dining table, feet up on the chair next to him as he swigs at his last beer and scrolls through his phone. “That’s what it is? You’re just intimidated by her?”

“I looked her up,” Brad replies, handing the last bowl to Delany as he finishes washing it. “I found like five separate articles about her, and she went to fricking Harvard, and McGill and trained in Paris and worked at some fancy places in New York…” he trails off, the lump back in his throat. “She’s basically good at everything, is my point here.”

Alex and Andy exchange glances between them as Brad looks up. “You do know she’s a _person_, right?” Delany says, putting the last dry bowl away as he does. “You just need to get to know her better, get over this roadblock you got going in your head.” 

“You’re one to talk, you ask out Molly yet?” Brad retorts, sick of hearing the same piece of advice from Delany’s mouth.

“Since when were we talking about me here? I’m not the one mooning-”

“Yes, you fucking are, Delany-”

“-over a girl!”

“Seriously, both of you need to listen _me_ right the fuck now,” Andy snaps, shaking his head at them both. “Molly’s a _bartender_, you idiot. She’s probably is up to her eyeballs with fake charmers and guys paying her false compliments – just be real, for once, and don’t be precious about it. And _you_,” he looks at Brad, gesturing with his beer bottle. “You need to stop thinking about Claire as an extension of her resumé. Get over it – she’s probably just as scared of asking you out as you are of asking her.” He shakes his head again and drains the beer, going back to his phone. “_Straight people_, oh my God...”

***

Brad finally gets the balls to walk into _Vanille_ with a container of homemade cream puffs on his lunch break the next day, his heart thudding in his chest. It should be no big deal, right? Just go find Claire (ask her out), give her the cream puffs, and hopefully she’ll see he’s not a complete moron. In his head, it’s easy – just walk up, flirt, charm her, feed her – but the place has people lining up almost out the door to order her $12 croissant sandwiches and $6 lattes. She’s gotta be too busy for the likes of him.

And then he sees her, and she’s _beautiful._

His face lights up as soon as he spots Claire coming out of the kitchen, carrying more trays of pastries and sandwiches. She’s not wearing her usual chocolate-streaked apron, though, and her hair’s loose and wavy rather than pinned back, curling at the tops of her shoulders (the ones he knows now are flocked with freckles and skin that flushes as bright as her cheeks do). She’s in _charge_ now, not just the resident Baking Queen with her arms up to her elbows in dough. Her smile is small and sweet as the customers at the front of the line talk to her, and he’s not really seen her like this – shy and nervous in front of a crowd.

Almost as Brad’s about to join the line to meet Claire Saffitz, her eyes lock with his from across the room, her grin splitting her face from ear to ear as she realises it’s him. Jesus Christ, she’s even more breath-taking, and wearing a dress that moves and skims her knees when she walks and – oh shit – she’s coming right up to him and he can’t think of anything but getting her to grin like this all the time.

“Hey Brad,” Claire says, her smile getting even wider somehow with every second he looks at it. “You finally decide to give us a shot?”

“What?” He blinks, flustered. _She means the food, idiot. _“Oh the- yeah, something like that. Kinda busy though, huh? I can come back.”

She looks at him with a pinched look and chuckles. “Please, like I’m making you wait in line when you fixed the bathroom tiles. I don’t know what I was thinking with Gorilla Glue.” Her hand waves and her head tilts. “C’mon into my office, I’ll make you a prosciutto on rye and you can tell me why you’ve got that box in your hands.”

(He’s in love)

“You had me at prosciutto, not gonna lie there, Claire.” Normally, Brad would be grateful for the noise and the people around them, so it doesn’t feel like he’s still playing some weird game of chicken with her, but the idea of eating lunch alone is the best idea she’s ever had. “Love me some prosciutto on rye. Or mortadella… hey, you ever had the sandwich at-”

“That one at _The Oaks _on 43rd? Yes!” Claire says excitedly, leading him through the café to the back office. “Best sandwich in the world, right? Mortadella’s totally underrated. It’s like the perfect medium point between bologna and fancy ham.”

Brad smacks his chest with a spare hand. “Oh Saffitz, Saffitz, _Saffitz_, you and me,” he gestures between them. “This is the start of something special here, I tell you. Hoo boy, you feed me cured pork and I’m yours for life, ain’t gonna get rid of me.”

“Wasn’t trying to,” she turns back and beams at him as she holds open the door to her tiny office. “Get comfy, I’ll get us something to eat.”

As the door closes behind her, Brad blinks in shock at the complete fucking chaos of paper and books around him. However neat and ordered her kitchen was, this office is the complete opposite. There’s a decent pile of her aprons on a worn, old couch, about a dozen cookbooks open and bookmarked on her desk and enough sticky notes over her notebook that he thinks she might as well just get a new one.

He can imagine her here, asleep on her piles of books, hoarding them like he does with tools. Without hesitation, Brad slumps down into her couch and sighs happily as it creaks because it really is fucking soft and squishy and loved.

“Hey, here you go,” Claire says as the door opens again, and this time she’s got a tray with two rye bread sandwiches an inch thick with what Brad can already tell is a fucking good quality prosciutto cotto, a couple of bottles of mate tea and a plate of pickle spears. “I got you yerba mate, kinda like iced tea,” she beams, setting the tray down on the coffee table in front of him.

Claire takes her sandwich from the tray before sitting on her desk, her bare legs right fucking there in front of him like candy. _Focus on the sandwich, Leone._

“It’s a wonder you don’t go bankrupt putting that much prosciutto into a single sandwich, Claire…” he picks up his plate and tries to contain all the meat inside the perfect, smoky rye bread but it spills onto the plate below. “Oh Jesus Christ.”

“Careful!” Her giggles, he decides, are worth the butter stain on his pants leg. “Nah, this is the Brad Leone special. Double the meat, toasted rye and butter. Nothing super fancy,” Claire shrugs and takes more of an elegant bite of her sandwich than he’s managing. “Good?”

The warmth of the barely toasted rye helps melt the pork fat into the butter just enough so that the richness explodes on his tongue. “Pretty good, Claire,” Brad nods, mumbling with his mouth full. “You make the bread?”

Claire’s face does something funny and she outright laughs at him as more prosciutto slips out between the bread. “Hell yeah, I made the bread! Four loaves a day, six days a week. I take Sundays off.”

“Hey, even God rested on the seventh day,” Brad mutters, picking the meat up off his plate and just eating it with his fingers. He grabs a pickle spear too, pointing it at her before crunching down on it (half-sours – she’s also got great taste in pickles). “_Great_ sandwich, Claire, one of the best. I mean, could do with a little something-something, but still pretty damn good.”

She frowns at him and he tries not to smirk. “What do you mean it needs something? You just said it was good!”

He waves the pickle at her again, just to emphasise the point. “C’mon, it’s so much, though, I want like a grain mustard or giardiniera to cut the fat. Pickles are great, but you can’t just have ‘em on the side, Claire, you gotta get the perfect bite.” Brad shrugs and really Claire looks mortally wounded but he _knows_ he’s right on this one.

Still, her piercing eyes are a little scary when they’re directing fire at him. Claire just shakes her head and eats her sandwich, feet dangling not quite to the floor where she’s sitting on the edge of her desk. “Okay, so maybe it needs _something_, but I don’t know about giardiniera, it’d make the bread soggy.”

“Nah, just drain it on paper towels like five minutes before, ‘s what I do.” Brad reaches for the bottle of tea, cracking it open and swigging. “Great taste in Yerba, though. I love the lemon one of this brand, too. Fuckin’ A.”

There’s a moment where Claire just stares at him, as if she doesn’t believe a word but she chuckles and groans instead in quick succession. “Just when I think I’ve got you pegged, you shock me, Leone.” Her eyes sparkle as they meet his and he blushes faintly. “Full of surprises.”

“You betcha, I made cream puffs!” he says, shoving the rest of his half sandwich into his mouth and grabbing the box on the couch seat next to him. “Look!” He lifts the lid and holds out a box of ten perfect cream puffs with a beaming grin. Brad _knows_ they’re good – and she’s about to know it too.

Her hair falls over her face as she leans forward, sandwich still in her hands, and inspects his handiwork. “Wow,” Claire replies, tilting her head as a smile starts growing on her lips. “That why you stopped by?” she asks, leaning back and setting her sandwich down. “To prove you could make choux pastry?”

Brad deposits the box next to the tray and tries just batting off her suggestion. “Yeah, yeah, watch the ego there, Teach. Maybe I just want some extra credit.”

But Claire rolls her eyes at him again and dusts her hands off, picking a cream puff up from his box. He doesn’t know why, but she studies it intensely, holding it up and – for some reason – feels the bottom with her slim fingertips, cream smearing on her index finger.

“Not bad. Good shape, not soggy on the bottom,” she licks the cream off her finger, glancing up at his flushed face. “Real vanilla, too?”

“What am I, some kinda cheapskate?” Brad mumbles, licking his bottom lip as she sinks her teeth into the puff. Cream and chocolate sauce ooze out and over her lip a little, enough for her to catch with the tip of her pink tongue and the air’s gone out of the room. “Well?”

Those dark eyes look heavily into his before they flicker to the pastry and study it intently, her fingers swiping as the cream is barely contained by the choux. “Love the chocolate sauce inside,” she mutters, licking her fingers again. This was either a _very bad_ idea or the best idea he’s ever had. “Great choux as well. Super crispy, really light. I think you got it, Brad.”

The swell of pride replaces whatever ideas he’s entertaining about Claire and whipped cream and he grins wide and brightly. “Yeah? I was scared I’d screw ‘em up again.”

She smiles simply, her legs sliding against each other, the pale skin catching his eye as she moves, oblivious to him sitting there trying not to stare. He wants – more than anything – for her to lick her fingers like that again.

“Yeah, it’s perfect, I’d put them in the bakery case, no problem. You shouldn’t sell yourself short, Brad. You’re not gonna be perfect after one try, it can take ages to get something complicated right. Just… be patient, okay? You got this – just come to the next lesson.”

If he thinks for even a moment that she’s being polite, it all washes away when she groans at her second bite of his cream puff.

Brad’s never gonna look at choux pastry the same way ever again.

** lesson four **

In his completely correct, not humble at-fucking-all opinion, pumpkin pie is the best thing in the _entire _dessert world and he’s practically bouncing in the kitchen at _Vanille _because Claire’s making one for him. Well, fine, technically it’s for the class, not _just_ for him, but it feels like it when the recipe him has more spices than absolutely necessary. Nutmeg, ginger, cardamom, cinnamon… everything he loves about pumpkin pie (including maple butter and sticky brown sugar) is in here and he’s fucking _excited_.

Brad fiddles with the pen in his hand as he watches her demonstrate how to line their pie pans the right way. He writes over the laminated pages with notes and doodles, leaning over the counter to get as close to her hands as possible.

“You wanna get as close contact to the pie tin as you can,” Claire says, the entire class watching closely. “But if you’re having trouble, use the spare pastry to press into the places you can’t get to.” Claire balls up the extra pie dough into a blob and kinda dabs at the surface of her pie shell until it’s smooth and even again, all neat and perfect. His gaze flickers from her hands to her face, where she has a smudge of flour on her cheek and he has the uncontrollable urge to wipe it off with his thumb. “Okay, let’s grab everyone’s pie dough from the walk-in, and get rolling...”

Shoving himself up from the countertop, Brad turns to get to the walk-in when Delany just stares him down, blocking the path. There’s a weird look on his face, and one hand in his apron pocket and Brad can feel the lecture coming from a mile off.

“Okay what you looking at me like that for? I got something on my face?” Brad asks, shoving the pen behind his ear on reflex.

“You didn’t ask Claire out yet, did you?” Alex replies, that look on his face dissolving as he rubs a hand over his chin. At least he’d waited until everyone else had vacated for the walk-in. “I’m gonna need an intervention here. Or maybe have you committed because you are _insane._”

“I do not need a fucking intervention, Delany.”

“What are we intervening?” Molly says from behind Alex, three stacks of wrapped pie dough in her hands. “Oh, shit, is this that thing I’m not ‘sposed to know about? Cos Alex totally told me already.”

His eyes snap to Delany, who simply shrugs. “It’s not like this is a normal thing for you, Brad, you don’t wait for anything,” he says carefully as Claire helps someone at the end of the bench, dropping his voice a little. “Don’t you like her?”

Molly next to him snorts, unwrapping her pie dough and bashing it out with her rolling pin like she’s taken the class a hundred times. “Please, you’re literally drawing hearts over the freaking recipe,” she waves her hand. “You’re _cute_, but it’s not that hard to ask someone out. Watch-” Molly dusts flour off her hands and instead looks at Alex. “Hey, Delany, you wanna go out Saturday night? Catch a couple beers and split a pizza downtown?”

Oh. Oh _fuck_.

This is the best thing Brad’s ever seen happen. He knows exactly why Andy was taking photos of the cream puff disaster because he wants to preserve the look on Alex’s face for all eternity.

“Uh… yeah, yeah, sounds great, Mol,” Delany stutters. He’s never seen his friend’s face go through anything like this – a range from completely blind-sided to hopeful in one second dead. “Saturday.”

Brad has to bite down so fucking hard on his cheek to keep from bursting out laughing. The sheer effort it takes him _not_ to laugh (out of kindness) is gonna give him a hernia. “That easy, huh?”

“Totes easy, dude.” Molly replies, flipping her perfect pie dough into the tin. “Guys think _way_ too hard about this stuff. It’s like – just ask, right? If it’s a no, you move the fuck on.”

It’s not until Molly realises that she forgot pie weights that Brad lets out the laughter in a snort. It rolls off him and his shoulders, uncontained until Delany shoves him at him hard and threatens to shove his rolling pin up Brad’s hypocritical ass. Brad just keeps laughing anyway – it’s worth the risk.

He’s so completely lost that he misses Claire yelling his name until the third time she says it.

“Brad!”

His head snaps up as her voice cuts through him. Claire’s flushed face is stern and there’s danger sparkling in her eyes again. Brad feels his cheeks red hot as he realises just how many people are staring at him.

“Sorry, Claire! It’s Delany’s fault!” Her brows arch up and something stirs deep inside him again. “Am I in trouble?”

Claire’s jaw ticks, though the corners of her mouth turn up. “You will be if you don’t get that pie dough done. You’re falling behind, and we can’t all wait for the incredible _Brad Leone_ to play catch up. Ass in fifth gear, c’mon.”

“Ha, ha,” Alex sings beneath his breath, having had some taste of revenge at Brad’s expense. “You got in trouble with Claire…”

Brad kicks him again, more out of reflex than anything he deserves. “You are so fucking annoying, Delany.”

Twenty minutes later, and – this is his favourite part – they’re on to the best part of pumpkin pie: the filling. Turns out, it’s just pumpkin from a can, with cream and sugar and spices, with eggs to set the mix. Super easy, apparently.

The love of pumpkin pie runs deep in Brad Leone; he loves it so much that he’s more eating than tasting the leftover raw filling out of his mixing bowl. He dips in a couple of spoons, his fingers, and the handle of a knife. Claire’s recipe is damn good, even uncooked – it’s got great spice and it’s not too sweet, though he’d use more salt. Brad’s about to dip a finger in again when there’s a sudden, sharp whack across his arm.

“What are you doing?” Claire’s laughing beside him, her wooden spoon brandished like a weapon in her hand. Her hair is coming out of whatever loose tie she’s got in and her apron’s covered in various splatters of orange goo. She also looks on the verge between pissed and amused. “That’s got raw eggs in, Brad!”

There’s nothing he can do except stand there, blinking at her, bowl in hand. “Did you just hit me with that wooden spoon?”

Her cheeks go pink almost instantly and she twirls the spoon in her fingers. “You’re eating raw eggs – you’ll get botulism or something.”

But Brad just rolls his eyes, holding the bowl out of her grasp. It’s easy, she’s fucking tiny compared to all 6’4” of him. “I’m not gonna get botulism, Claire! Nobody’s had botulism in years. Fricking _botulism._”

“Don’t make me use this again, Brad,” she waves the spoon dangerously, that spark back in her deep, dark eyes. “I can hit harder if I wanted to.”

His grin splits his face as he looks between her flaring eyes and the wooden spoon, voice lowered. “That a promise or a threat, Saffitz?”

The reward he gets for toeing the line is her running her teeth over her plump bottom lip, her smile turning into a grin that matches his. Maybe she’s gonna keep flirting with him and God, wouldn’t that be a fucking thing.

Whatever sparks fire between them come crashing to a halt when there’s a loud shattering sound from the other (luckily empty) end of the room – someone’s left a glass bowl on a hot burner at the back and it’s cracked and broken on the floor. He watches her shoulders slump as she realises there’s another mess for her to clean up. All Brad wants is to be flirting with her again, just to see how far he can wind her up.

Claire turns back to him, leaving the wooden spoon on his station. “To be continued. I’m watching you, Leone!”

It takes Brad all the willpower he has not to steal that wooden spoon off the countertop.

***

The whole kitchen smells of the class’s pumpkin pies baking in the ovens (the class ran too late, which he tries and fails to feel guilty about). The delicious smell is about the only good Brad can see about his current position on the floor of her kitchen.

There’s a reason, he’s sure, that he’s currently lying on his back on cold, hard tiles, head squarely under pipes that lead to leaking sinks, old water dripping on him from a height. There’s gotta be a reason he agreed to help Claire fix up rusted pipes and glued-down bathroom tiles and change the lightbulbs she can’t reach. His back’s gonna be fucking broken if he spends any more time trying to tighten bolts and washers for a temporary fix.

And then she’s crouching next to him suddenly, wanting to see what he’s doing, holding up the light from her cell phone torch to help. It hits him then, when she’s obviously tired and just needs someone to take a burden off her, that she’s still there helping him. The light bathes her face softly too, and for a moment Brad forgets about his back pain, about the dust on his cramping hands and the water dripping on his arms.

It scares him, really, how much he wants just to be there for her when nobody else seems to be.

“You okay?” Claire prompts softly, worrying at her lip as he tries tightening the replacement bolt with a wrench. “I should call a plumber; this was too much of a favour to ask.”

“Kidding me, Claire?” he replies incredulously, gritting his teeth as he manages finally to get the bolt around the rusted screws. “See? Piece of cake. Fricking plumber my ass…” Brad drops the wrench, pulling himself out from under the sink a little. “Run the water for me, let’s see this bad boy try and leak on ya now.”

She looks sceptical but stands, leaning over slightly. He probably shouldn’t be looking at the pale stripe of skin around her waist as her shirt rides up and he _definitely_ shouldn’t be looking at her ass in those fucking jeans again. Was she _trying_ to distract him?

“We good?” she calls down after a few seconds.

To his great relief, there’s not a single drip falling on his face anymore. “It’s good!” he laughs. “Hell yeah, Claire, we did it!”

“Well, you did it, I just watched,” she replies, shutting off the water. “How long will it last, you think?”

Brad dusts off his hands and sits up with a groan, stretching out his back. “Eh, running every day? Maybe a week or two. I got a buddy I can call for ya, he’ll do a better repair job than I can.”

Her hands reach out for his and they chuckle as she helps him up from the kitchen floor, though she doesn’t hold much of his weight. “I really owe you like a hundred favours, Brad. This place is so much work, I don’t-” she cuts herself off, waving her hand and wandering over to the big countertop, suddenly distant and dismissive. “Forget it, it’s dumb.”

“Come on, Saffitz, you ain’t gonna leave me hanging here, are ya?” he asks softly, watching as she fiddles with trays of leftovers, straightening the plastic wrap. “What’s up?”

Brad really doesn’t want to push her, but he somehow just has to know what’s wrong so he can _help_. This woman – way out of his league – is funny, bossy, sweet, and the most Type A person he’s ever met, but he doesn’t think he could ever stand to see her unhappy, stressed, bone-tired as is tonight.

(He loves her)

So, he doesn’t push further. He lets her fiddle with the plastic wrap for a moment, leaning on his forearms across the countertop, lets her work out what she’s feeling rather than force her to voice what’s wrong, his gaze trained intently on her face.

It’s only when he spots her eyes going glassy that he reaches out, curling his rough, wide hand around her wrist and arresting her movements. She finally looks at him, tired and weary and innocent.

“They might not renew the lease next year,” Claire mutters softly, turning her head down. “Something about selling up, fixing up this entire block as housing. I don’t know if I can go through all this stuff again, Brad.”

Whatever he’d thought it was, it wasn’t that.

“They can do that?” he mutters, still holding her hand gently. “Shit, Claire, that just… that _sucks_.”

Claire lets out a small laugh, nodding and pulling her hair back behind her ear. Those eyes are still wide, glassy and soft, and they catch his heart like nothing. “Yeah, totally sucks,” she replies. “It’s out of my control, and I hate it and everything, yeah it just _sucks_ so hard.”

He tries to not feel the loss as she lets go of his hand. “What’s the plan then, Claire. You got like, some road options, right?”

She leans on top of the counter too, looking past him and the world around her. “If they want me out, I don’t have any option, we’ll have to close,” she says carefully. “I could reopen somewhere else, but the money’s not there for that. I could downsize, y’know, go back to work for another bakery in town, get the money up, try again in a couple years…”

But he knows there’s something she doesn’t want to say. Another road. “Or?”

Her eyes catch his and she bites her lip. “I have standing offers in New York. Good money, I guess, but it’s not… here.”

Brad’s never understood what the world dropping from under your feet meant until the idea that Claire might move back to the east coast is dangled there. He doesn’t know her – not really – but he’d bet all the money in the world that he _knows_ her, the vulnerability she hides like he does, by putting on a show. She displays her intelligence and competency like he does with his confidence – loud, brash, shoved in your face. Deep down, they’re the same, he thinks, just two people putting on a show.

“Got under your skin, huh?” he says, smiling just a little. “Claire, I grew up in New Jersey, just a suburb on a lake, going fishing, and hiking, and camping in the woods. I never lived anywhere but Anchorage and New Jersey. You… you lived in Paris, right? And Canada, and New York, and I bet you did great. Fuck am I saying, course you did great, you’re _you_.”

Her slim fingers rub off the errant tears as she chuckles. “I hated Montreal so much, it was colder than here. It _totally_ sucked.”

“Well yeah, it’s fricking _Canada_,” he scrunches up his face. “But you got through it, right? You’re gonna be a giant fucking success, Saffitz. You wait and see.”

For a moment, the weight of the world seems to be off her shoulders and her smile is small but so, so real. “Thanks, Brad,” Claire says quietly. “I don’t – how are you so easy to talk to?”

(He loves her)

“Eh, the guys at the wood shop talk my ear off all day. At least you’re easier on the eyes than them.” The giggle and the grin and the blush are all he needs. “C’mon, Claire, you’ll figure it out.”

Before he knows what’s happening, his arms are around her shoulders in a soft hug, and he gets to hold her just enough to be more than polite. Her tiny hands flare over his back as she squeezes him, and he ignores the skip of his heart and the feeling growing in the pit of his stomach. Brad doesn’t get how a woman he’s barely known for a month could hold so much of him in her hand.

There’s a moment when her head tilts up and her eyes search his for an unanswered question and yeah, Brad _knows_.

He’s about to lean down to kiss her when the oven timer rings shrilly next to his ear.

“Shit, shit, shit, the pies…” she snaps, rushing to the ovens to get out ten different pumpkin pies.

Brad’s heart pounds a heavy rhythm in his chest because Claire makes him lose all fucking control of himself.

“They smell _great_, Claire!” he says too brightly, ears red as he goes over to look at his pie, now cooling on a stovetop. “Y’know, I really like a good pecan pie, but the best part of it is the top with all the candied pecans, all toasty-roasty, super crunchy. You think I could get like a pumpkin pie bottom with pecan topping? Is that even possible?”

For a moment, Claire looks at him like he’s insane. Her cheeks look hotter than his ears feel but she seems to at least entertain him and his dumb ramblings. “Like Frankenstein them?” Her eyes widen and her smile’s back, her head tilting. “That’s a great idea, and I’m totally gonna steal it. Shouldn’t I be the one giving you tips since you been doing all this stuff for me?”

The fact that she’s humouring him makes the last few moments of weirdness melt away. “Nah. This one’s on the house, Saffitz. You’ve taught me enough already.”

He doesn’t kiss Claire that night. Maybe it just isn’t meant to happen, he thinks.

(But he loves her all the same)

** lesson five **

Brad dreads his last baking lesson with Claire, partly _because_ it’s the last lesson and also because he’s got no idea what they’re supposed to be doing with a couple sticks of rock-hard butter wrapped in dough and folded a hundred times. What does laminated even mean, anyway?

If he beats his own butter block – not a euphemism – a little harder as a form of therapy, he doesn’t think anyone else notices. There’s just that same tension in his shoulders, weird and focussed on not messing up one last time: he’s _got_ this. It’s like a chorus of whacking sounds out of rhythm all around him as they make this weird, layered dough as a class. Claire already has precise 90-degree corners on her slab of butter when his looks more like the creature from the black lagoon.

All Brad really wants to do is make her proud.

“You’re like super quiet tonight, man,” Delany says softly next to him, drowned by the sound of rolling pins. “I thought I’d like it when it happened but now it has, I’m just worried about you.”

“Ha-fricking-ha,” Brad replies, not looking away from his dough if he can help it. “I’m great, Delany, can’t be better.”

But Alex just chuckles and rolls his eyes. “Come on, Brad, something’s majorly up. Hardly talked to me all week, and now I’m getting weird vibes of you fucking _concentrating_.”

Brad’s eyes turn down to his butter block, neatening off the edges a little more without even thinking about it. “It’s all good, bud, it’s great. I just... don’t know.” He glances up at Claire’s back as she washes her hands in the sink. “Claire might be leaving town.”

“Shit,” Delany whispers after a moment, his own hands going still. “She told you that?”

He just nods in reply. “Pretty much. Nothing I can even fucking do, you know? Sucks ass.”

His friend is quiet for a moment, gripping his rolling pin like a baseball bat as he shakes his head in denial. “Nah, it’s gonna work out. There’s no way it doesn’t.”

There’s that fear again, fear that Alex is wrong, and that he’s gotta do _something_ about it because the inactivity itches at his brain like Sunday afternoon boredom. He can’t just let her go through all this on her own, like some asshole.

“But what do I do?” he asks almost desperately. “You know me, I can’t just fucking do nothing. I’m like a shark, man, if I stop, I’ll die.”

“You don’t _do_ anything, Brad, it’s not about you,” Delany says quieter still. “You just gotta be there.”

Suddenly, Claire’s voice comes from the front of the room and Brad smacks Alex in the arm to get him to pay attention again.

“Okay so once the dough’s done, you can basically make all kinds of things with it,” Claire says, flipping through her copy of the recipe booklet she’d written, holding the pages up to the class with pictures of different pastries and stuff. “There’s flaky cinnamon rolls, Danishes… you can even invent something new, if you want. This dough’s really forgiving, super buttery, rich, and, like, flaky but it’s bread-like and not too delicate, so it can hold up to some strong flavours. So, come up here when you’re ready and pick your ingredients, see what you wanna make.”

Behind her, there’s so much fresh produce and other things laid out on a spare table at the top of the kitchen that it looks like they’re about to have a fucking feast. Brad’s sure he could survive a good few weeks on all the things Claire’s put out – fruit, chocolate, pastry crème and spreads and jams, and even cheeses, deli meats and a thick tomato sauce, and pretty much every spice she probably has on hand (the tubs are all labelled and matching and that’s _so_ Claire, he could cry). It’s snack heaven and he’s gonna have a hard time not eating that piece of gorgonzola with the apricots just straight up.

When his dough’s done (or he thinks it should be done – there’s no real way of telling when you don’t know what you’re doing), Brad wipes off his hands and digs through the ingredients on the table like she said to, resisting the urge to just rip things open, smell them, taste them, eat them (and probably steal them, too).

He’s balancing armfuls of beautiful ingredients when Claire comes over, handing him a sheet tray to carry his stuff on. “You good, Brad? I figured you’d go for the savoury side.”

“You kidding me, it’s great, Claire! Fucking hot _and_ sweet soppressata? Y’know, if you wanna ditch class, I’ll grab a couple bottles of wine and we can just have a goddamn picnic right here, right now.”

Her laughter bubbles up easily, like she can’t stop herself. “Me ditch class? I’m the one teaching it, Brad, I don’t get to ditch.”

“Oh, you were one of _those_, huh? Miss Straight-A honour roll student. Bet you never ditched a single class in your life,” he grins, picking up three different kinds of cheese because they all kinda look delicious and he’s fucking hungry as hell right now. “I’m allowed to take all these, right?”

“Sure, sure,” she replies, crossing her arms over her chest, still with that faintly amused look on her face. “That’s _one_ way to beat everyone, take all the good stuff so they can’t use it. Have a one-man champagne picnic instead.”

“Woah there, Teach, you never said this was a competition.” He blinks at her before looking down at his heaving tray, with a random mess of things he pretty much just wants to eat. “Maybe I gotta strategise here…”

Claire pokes a hand around his ingredients. “Kinda looks like you’re making pizza or something. Are you actually just hungry?”

“Yeah, I’m fricking starving, Claire, I came straight here from work,” Brad replies off-handed, pulling one of his cheeses from her grip. “Pizza sounds _so_ good-” he stops as the idea pops into his head, a slow grin forming on his lips. “Oh, my God, Claire! You are a fricking _genius_! Ha ha!”

“But I didn’t say anything!” she yells after him, frowning as he goes back to his station.

Okay so he may have eaten a couple of thick slices of soppressata and caciocavallo because he’s hungry, but it’s gonna be worth it in a half hour when his homemade, fucking gourmet-as-shit Hot Pockets come out of the oven. The smell’s driving him _insane_ and basically the entire class has come to look at what he’s baking. He doesn’t get how suddenly it’s the best goddamn day ever; it’s like she’s comes hurtling into his life and the whole pastry universe opens wide and tells him to make a Hot Pocket, but good and he _wants_ to, and it’s _fun_.

It’s not until they come out, dark golden brown, crispy, flaky and smelling deeply of oregano and garlic and tomatoes that he kinda gets what Claire loves so much about her job. Brad looks down at his tray of twelve mini Hot Pocket things, and yeah, they’re sloppy and they busted through the seams here and there, but they’re _his_ beneath it all. He’s just super fucking proud of them, okay? It’s the same feeling he gets when he’s finished giving a beautiful oak wood a natural varnish and all the hard work becomes apparent as the wood grain come to the surface and every minute he spent sanding is worth it.

The whole thing together – a mess of flaky dough, cured meat and oozing, gooey cheese – is fucking incredible.

Even Delany’s lingering next to him, waiting until the pastries aren’t molten lava inside. “Shit, those smell awesome,” Alex says, touching the edge of one while they chill down on the cooling rack. “Dibs on that one.”

“You can’t call dibs on my Hot Pockets! Keep your cheap imitation ham and cheddar away from my boys.” Brad grins, tugging the rack away from Delany’s reach. “Y’ain’t gonna get ‘em, bud.”

“That’s not fair-”

Alex is about to protest when Claire leans her entire torso over from the opposite side of the counter, stealing one from the rack. Brad just groans dramatically, shrugging his arms up in the air. “You coulda just asked, Saffitz! I was saving you one!”

“Oh sure,_ Claire _gets one!” Delany retorts, reaching out and grabbing a Hot Pocket for himself, managing to grab it before Brad pulls them away again. “Too slow!”

Brad just sneaks a glance at Claire licking tomato sauce and cheese from her lips, looking at the pastry as if it’s opening her up to the wide universe of possibilities out there, too. He can see it in her eyes as she meets his gaze and grins: he really did make her proud.

“Good?” he asks across the kitchen as she inhales the damn thing.

She simply gives him a thumbs-up in reply, her apron coated in crumbs of pastry. The rest of the class, one-by-one, devour his Hot Pockets, and even Alex tells him he’s kinda won the whole thing hands down, as he splits a Hot Pocket with Molly. It’s yet another lesson Claire’s taught him – to fully own what you’re baking; take pride and passion and you can make incredible things.

If he never gets another day baking next to Claire Saffitz, this wouldn’t be a bad note to go out on, he thinks.

***

The next Tuesday night’s more of a comedown than anything. Not even Andy and Delany arguing at length is amusing him anymore. It’s back to the same shit, in the same bar, looking at the same tables of the same people he’d known forever. Plus, he’s bored out of his mind – game’s a deadlock and he refuses to cheer for the Pats.

It’d be fine that things hadn’t changed except for the fact that everything feels different. Yeah, he’s drinking the same local craft brews that Delany gets on his high horse about, and the same music’s playing like it has done every fucking Tuesday for the last two and a half years, but it feels weird, somehow. It feels different, and it’s bugging the shit out of him.

(At least there’s Molly, who – thank fucking God – still refuses to be any nicer to Delany despite the fact they’re officially dating. Brad doesn’t think he could stand to be in the same room with a version of Molly who willingly paid Alex a compliment. He doesn’t think Alex could either)

Brad’s foot is tapping incessantly on the ground, the label from his beer ripped in pieces when Delany apparently decides that enough is enough. 

“Okay, this is a DEFCON level two intervention, Leone,” Delany sighs, picking up the shredded label paper from the table. “You’re driving us fucking insane.”

“God, here we go…” he replies, draining his third beer. “I don’t wanna talk about Claire, okay? Jesus fucking Christ, Delany.”

Andy snorts, shaking his head. “Wow, you were _totally_ right,” he says to Alex, drinking his own beer. “It’s _bad_. This explains a whole lot about your work this week.”

Brad ignores them, tension building in his shoulders. It’s not often he gets angry – really fucking rare actually – but he might make an exception for the people who should be his friends who are instead picking holes in him like vultures. “You two are giving me a fucking headache right now, alright? Just… can we not talk about her for one night?”

He thinks that’s the end of it, or he does for the five seconds of silence that passes between them, Andy glued to his phone while Delany watches the game.

It’s a nice five seconds, Brad thinks, before his life becomes even more complicated.

“Nah, nope, can’t do this. We’re gonna have to talk about it,” Delany says casually, leaning forwards with his arms on the table. “So, when you gonna realise that you’re in love with Claire?”

Next to him, Andy chokes on his drink, eyes wide as he looks up at Brad. “Oh my God, you’re in love with Claire?!” he exclaims, clapping a hand on his shoulder and shaking him. “Wait– you don’t _know_ that you’re in love with Claire?”

Slowly, the realisation dawns on Brad. Except he can’t, right? You can’t love a girl you’ve only known a few weeks, barely over a month. “I’m not in love with Claire…” he says quietly, looking down at the tabletop. “I can’t be in love with Claire!”

“Oh, dude,” Andy just says, eyes wide and sympathetic. “You really gotta ask her out like, yesterday. What if she meets someone else? I know it can suck, putting yourself out there, but… come on, man.”

“It’s not every day Brad Leone falls in love,” Delany says softly. “I never thought I’d say this but… you need to stop thinking so much.”

Brad snorts in laughter when they both do, and it feels good to just stop thinking so much about being _careful._ He’s not a careful guy with people – he knows he’s loud and chaotic and dives in with a hand tied behind his back, but with her it’s all been so fucking measured that the feeling had crept up on him slowly, filtering into his heart with every passing minute they spent together. It’s thrown him off the fucking rails.

“Alright, alright, so what if I have feelings for her?” He shrugs, leaning back in his chair. “What d’you do with ‘em?”

“God knows,” Delany replies. “We have no idea. Maybe go back and ask if she needs her sink fixed again.”

Andy looks confused between them. “Is that a euphemism for something I don’t know about?”

They laugh again and it feels _good_ to get the weight off his shoulders. It’s then that Brad knows it’s not the bar that’s changed; it’s not the company, or the hockey games or the beer – he’s the one that’s different – he wants _more_ than sitting here, drinking and watching football.

“Ah, fuck, man. Why’d you have to drag me to that fucking class? She’s about to get kicked out of her own business cos the asshole landlord wants to sell to some shithead developer or something. I don’t know what to do, Delany.”

“You don’t need to do anything, though,” he replies. “If you swoop in there, save the day for her, it’s gonna make her feel like she’s got no control, and you’re just gonna seem like a dick solving all her problems without being asked. So, solution, don’t do anything.”

Brad groans loudly, pressing his forehead to the sticky bar table, regretting any and all life choices he’s made that got him to the point of loving Claire Saffitz from afar. “Yeah, yeah, yeah Delany. Why you gotta be right _all_ the time, it’s fucking exhausting.”

Alex just pats him on the back, and Brad can hear the sadistic grin in his voice, because although these are his friends, there’s no way they aren’t at least a little bit enjoying seeing him in agony. “I know, bud, I know.”

There’s another moment of weird quiet as Brad pulls his head from the table, a coaster stuck to his forehead. He groans and peels it off silently, tossing it at Delany.

“So, this guy I met the other night, he’s kind of a loner, but I’m really digging the vibe,” Andy says suddenly, breaking the quiet, looking back down at his phone. “But you know what I’m like, it’s one disaster to the next, and he says he’s not ‘_looking for anything serious right now’ _which I know is code for not wanting anything serious ever, but he’s so fun and-”

“Andy!” Delany interrupts, shaking his head. “Read the room.”

Andy’s head snaps up. “Oh, so we got time to talk about Brad’s relationship drama but not mine?” he replies, raising an eyebrow at Delany, a smirk poking at the corner of his mouth. “That’s just _wrong. _He’s not even in a fucking relationship!”

The coaster bounces off Andy’s head as Delany throws it at him and Brad bursts out laughing: some things he’s glad haven’t changed.

***

Quite how he’s got to this specific point, Brad’s not sure – he’s just relieved that he listened to his friends for once.

He can see Claire in the bakery as she closes for the day, doing the tiny jobs nobody would think about doing in her absence. Brad almost feels weird, just watching her from the glass doorway in his winter coat, but he can’t seem to tear himself away from doing it either. There’s something about the way she just keeps going, moving around the chairs and straightening as she works on three other tasks at once like water flowing gently, its path splitting and spilling. The last of the sun’s fading away and hitting the soft curves of her cheeks in a way he’d not seen under the harsh lights of the kitchen: Brad wants to touch her skin and see how it feels to be sunlight.

Through the glass, Claire spots him and her face changes in an instant. The tiredness in her gaze melts as their eyes lock like they have done a hundred times over and will a hundred times again. He grins back at her as she walks towards him, unlocking the front door swiftly.

“Hey Claire,” Brad says, heart hammering, hitching his backpack further up his shoulder because he’s nervous as hell. “You closing up on your own?”

She just nods, stepping aside to let him in. “Yeah, I told all the staff to go home, y’know. It’s Friday, they work so hard…”

Brad chuckles, beaming even wider. “Course you did, what the fuck was I thinking, huh?” he steps inside the bakery, grateful to be in the warm. “You want a hand closing? I’m pretty sure I can wipe a table clean to Saffitz standards.”

Claire blushes faintly around the tops of her cheeks as he hangs his coat. “Sure, if you’re offering.” She tucks her hair behind her ear as it falls over her face. “I’m almost done with cleaning, though. Wanna help me prep for tomorrow?”

He leans back in shock, peering down at her. “Seriously? You trust me to help you? Me? The guy who got eggshells in his cake?”

Her arms cross over her chest. “What did I tell you about selling yourself short?” She shakes her head, walking him through the café and back to the kitchens. “You made laminated pastry, Brad. I see right through you – you care more about this than you think you do, and you’re _good._”

“Yeah, well, I had a great teacher,” he mumbles, trying not to let his eyes drift too much to her ass as she leads him through the storefront. “What’re we making, then, boss?”

“Hot Pockets,” she beams at him, a giggle at the end of her voice again. “The Brad Leone specialty! Kinda freaky that you came by as I was just about to start.”

For a moment, he thinks she’s joking, that she wouldn’t put a fricking Hot Pocket on her menu, not in this fancy-ass bakery, one serving French butter in pastries and organic slow-drip coffee (Delany wouldn’t shut up about the fucking coffee for a full week), and food he didn’t even know how to pronounce. He’s about to laugh when he sees the ingredients already out on the stations next to her – hot and sweet soppressata, and like five different types of cheese and a Cambro tub of tomato sauce: she’s not joking.

“Wait,” he says slowly, leaning across the countertop and picking through the ingredients. “You’re actually serious?”

Claire looks at him like he’s crazy. “Duh, of course. Everyone loved them, Brad, they’re _definitely_ going on the menu, at least as a trial. I get way too stuck in my own head about like, technique and presentation and blah, blah, blah. Turns out, all people really want is meat, cheese and buttery pastry. Nothing bad about that. And, like, screw it, I might not have long left in this place anyway. I’m gonna make what I want to make, and I wanna make your Hot Pockets.”

Brad doesn’t know quite what to do or to say. His cheeks are on fire as he looks over the food laid out, ready for prepping, his weight on his forearms as he leans on her countertops. It’s like he was meant to be here to see this, to see _her_ realising that she can do this, that it doesn’t have to be perfect when the future of _Vanille _is up in the air.

“This is pretty fucking cool, Claire,” he turns his head, looking up at her with barely concealed glee. “It’s good to see you like this, you were getting dark there. I actually was coming by to give you a little something, cheer you up out of your usual patented Saffitz doom and gloom, but-”

“You got me something?” she interrupts, her eyes sparkling down at him. “Like, a present?”

He rolls his eyes and pushes up off the counter, her following him to where he’d dumped his stuff by the door. “Oh yeah, that’s what you’re focusing on here, the fact you get a present.”

“Well, yeah, I want my present,” Claire whines as he digs through his backpack. “Who wouldn’t want a present?”

From his backpack, Brad pulls out a beautiful, handmade wooden rolling pin wrapped in a haphazard ribbon with a bow. He’s still not sure what to say, but from the look on her face, he’s sure she already loves it because her jaw has literally dropped at the sight of it, eyes wide and disbelieving.

“I made it, had some cherry wood scraps going to waste and, y’know, it’s a great wood for this shit, right?” he says awkwardly, handing her the rolling pin. “And I wanted to say like – thank you and it’ll last you fricking forever, you know. It’s real handmade in the shop, great wood, took me a half a day to get the thickness even all the way round. It’s a beaut, right?”

Claire just takes it from him, running her fingers slightly over the grains of wood at the ends of the dowel. “It’s… it’s a French tapered rolling pin. Those are the kind I use.”

“I know, Claire,” he says, hands on his hips. “Maybe you could use it, you know. Like a memento or – look, fuck, I just hope you like it, is all.”

Her teeth run over her lip as she stares down at his present, cradling it with care and he swells with pride, that feeling bubbling deep inside his gut because nothing beats that look on her face when he exceeds her expectations.

“Thank you.” She smiles widely, setting it down on the counter with care. “Thank you so much. I uh- I wanted…”

But she stops talking when she stutters, and he just has to hold her.

Brad’s thick arms wraps tenderly around her shoulders and her waist, letting her bury her face in his chest. Her hair is silky and warm as he places a tentative kiss to her crown, his lips lingering as her hold on his back tightens imperceptibly. It’s different than their first hug, even; he’s so fucking aware of her body pressed up against his tightly that he can feel her hot breath on his stomach through his t-shirt.

“Everything’s gonna be fine, Claire, I promise,” he mutters, as quiet as he’s ever been.

“Promise?”

He can’t say who moves first, but her head tilts up, doe eyes wide and dark as she looks at him. Brad leans down as she presses up, their lips crashing together suddenly and all at once.

The bow breaks and her still waters flood him, his hand cradling her cheek and feeling the sunshine finally. She’s demanding and hungry for him, gripping the front of his shirt so he couldn’t pull apart from her even if he wanted to, tasting of coffee and warmth. Brad kisses Claire as if she’s stolen a part of him that he thought he’d buried deep inside, his fingers sliding into her loose, thick hair.

The back of her body collides with the countertop behind her and she gasps softly into his mouth, his other hand tugging dangerously on her hip. Only then does he pull apart from her as she moans his name, his heart hammering hard and fast and painfully in his chest. It’s so much. Too much. He can’t stop himself.

Claire licks her swollen lips when he presses his forehead to hers, just revelling in the relief spreading through him, his broad shoulders twitching with the effort not to haul her up on the kitchen counters and make a mess of her.

“So… you maybe wanna go out to dinner with me tomorrow?” Brad asks, voice gravelly and deep, barely able to hold back from taking those lips of hers again and again and again.

“Thought you’d never ask,” Claire beams, wrapping her arms around his back and pulling him closer to her. He kisses her again, simply because he can.

It’s not a declaration, it’s not a perfect story, or a happy ending.

He loves her, and it’s only the beginning.

** lesson six **

If Claire thinks hard about what heaven is, it’s this exact moment in perpetuity. He teaches her that happy doesn’t need to be hard.

It’s Sunday morning in bed, late enough that the sun’s shining on her flushed, naked skin as her fingers curl into the bedsheets for something to hold onto. Her heart hammers erratically, her head thrown back as he tastes the wetness between her trembling thighs. She’s thinking of nothing except for the sight of his sharp blue eyes peering up over the contours of her body and what the fuck he’s doing with his tongue.

Those thick fingers, the ones she’s thought about for a month straight, slide deep inside her; they burn and stretch and wring more curse words and pleas from her mouth. Claire can’t stand it and slides her fingers into his curls, shoving his face down again to do whatever magic he’s doing to her weak body. One arm of his, strong and firm, holds her hips down to the mattress and it’s _torture_.

“Yes, yes, Bra- oh fuck – right – yes…” she babbles as he eats her out, trying to press her hips up to get more. “Please, please, please.”

“Fuckin’ beautiful,” she feels him murmur against her cunt, the vibration and his smile and everything about Brad Leone making her world spin. “C’mon babe, wanna taste you.”

Claire moans as he laps at her, teeth grazing her sensitive flesh and she snaps in two.

Heaven is her coming on Brad’s hand, his arm keeping her steady as she rides it out on his scruffy face, pleasure exploding like fireworks deep in her belly. She’d never believed she’d be this happy when her life’s in shambles – when her business might be over, when she has no idea what to do – but she’s free when she’s with him. Her back arches and her mouth falls open in a sharp cry as he keeps her coming, wringing her for every drop he can taste.

“Oh God, I love you,” she says breathlessly as he pulls back, licking her wetness from his lips.

Their eyes meet again, her lungs begging for air as he kisses her once more, tasting herself on his tongue. They’ll figure out the world – sometimes together, sometimes on their own – but they’ll have this, always. He slides inside her, slowly, give her space and time she _knows_ the lesson he’s taught her in this perfect Sunday morning_. _Oh, how she _knows_.

(He loves her, he loves her, he loves her) 

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, please consider leaving me a comment, because it took nearly two full weeks of writing after work to do. I am nothing if not grateful for your support, and for the discord and peanut butter M+Ms.


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